Oops ... Red faces after six-year-old United Airlines bankruptcy story is mistakenly published - forcing shares into a nosedive

News moves at high speed in the digital world, and as every journalist knows, that's all the more reason to constantly check your facts.

Unfortunately, not all were as zealous as they could have been yesterday.

An American newsletter picked up then passed along a story claiming that United Airlines had filed for bankruptcy. The story was picked up by the Bloomberg financial wires, causing United shares to plummet from $12 to $5 within five minutes.

The only problem was, the story was six years old.

A United Airlines flight chartered for Team USA. United shares tanked yesterday after the accidental publication of a six-year-old story claiming the airline had filed for bankruptcy

United shares tanked even further to just $3 before trading was halted. The company recovered only a portion of that before ending the day down by a larger percentage than other airline stocks.

The trouble started with a Google search.

A staffer at investment newsletter Income Securities Advisors Inc. in Miami Lakes, Florida, entered the words "bankruptcy" and "2008" in the Internet search engine, according to President Richard Lehmann.

ISA does this all the time, searching for overlooked information about companies in trouble, he said.

Mr Lehmann said the top item returned in the Google search was a story about United's bankruptcy filing that appeared on the South Florida Sun Sentinel Web site. The story referred to United's filing on Monday morning.

United had indeed filed for Chapter 11 protection on a Monday - but Monday, December 9, 2002, not Monday, September 8, 2008.

The date, Mr Lehman said, was not on the story.

At 10:43 a.m. the staffer posted a summary of the story from the Sun Sentinel site on the financial information service Bloomberg, Mr Lehmann said.

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Bloomberg has its own journalists but also distributes information from third-party providers such as ISA, for which some subscribers pay extra.

Unfortunately for Mr Lehmann, however, all Bloomberg users would have been able to see the headline regardless of whether or not they would have been able to read the story.

After trading around $12 a share yesterday morning, the stock of United parent company, UAL Corp., dropped at least as low as $4.62 about five minutes after the ISA article was posted on the Bloomberg terminal.

The shares fell as low as $3 before Nasdaq halted trading less around 11 a.m. EDT (1500 GMT).

"The phones immediately started ringing around here," Mr Lehmann said.

He said his firm did nothing wrong in posting its summary of the Chicago Tribune story written on the day of United's 2002 bankruptcy filing. The Chicago Tribune and the Sun Sentinel are owned by the same parent company.

"The story that we put up was a very accurate translation of the story that appeared in the Chicago Tribune," he said.

"The only thing was, it was five years ago.

"We've been doing this for going on 10 years, and this kind of thing has never happened before, so I don't think this calls for any change in procedure," he said.

Bloomberg spokeswoman Judith Czelusniak said the company makes third-party material available to subscribers.

"We do not edit third-party websites or other news organization content. Rather, in addition to our proprietary content and news, we provide information from various sources that Bloomberg users can view," she wrote in an e-mail message.

Editors at the Sun Sentinel did not respond to messages.

A statement from the Tribune Co., which owns the Sun Sentinel and the Chicago Tribune, said a preliminary investigation showed that the Chicago Tribune story from 2002 "was located in the archive section of the website of the Sun Sentinel in South Florida.

"The story contains information that would clearly lead a reader to the conclusion that it was related to events in 2002.

"In addition, the comments posted along with the story are dated 2002.

"To be clear, no story appeared today or over the weekend on the Sun Sentinel website or any Tribune website regarding United Airlines' filing for bankruptcy."

United quickly denied the bankruptcy rumor categorically yesterday morning, and issued a statement saying, "The story was related to United's 2002 bankruptcy filing, and United has demanded a retraction from the Sun Sentinel and is launching an investigation."

Asked whether United had made a mistake in blaming the Sun Sentinel, United spokeswoman Robin Urbanski said the company stands behind its statement.

Trading in shares of Chicago-based UAL Corp. resumed at 12:30 p.m. EDT. They closed at $10.92, down $1.38, or 11.2 per cent, from their close on Friday.

A single trade for one penny on the CBOE Stock Exchange was later reversed. Nasdaq said the trades made during the 13 minutes when the shares were falling in earnest would stand, and that the decision could not be appealed.

United emerged from bankruptcy protection in early 2006.

Like other airlines, it has struggled with rising fuel prices, and its finances have been shaky, although there has been no suggestion that another bankruptcy filing is imminent.

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Oops ... Red faces after six-year-old United Airlines bankruptcy story is mistakenly published - forcing shares into a nosedive